What Would Happen If...?

For the first time in awhile I was actually looking forward to seeing my parents, since I’d spent a year in complete isolation from all humans. I knew that I couldn’t tell them what happened and I would need to make a phoney excuse about Fred and me. We figured that we could just say that Barry ran away into the woods and we couldn’t find him. But then there’s me… I’m taller, stronger and I have longer and darker hair. How could we possibly say that this was just an “abnormal growing streak?” it’s impossible, they would stat asking question and if they were really concerned, maybe some sort of blood test that would tell them how old I really was.

Mom and dad are supposed to arrive here in seven hours and thirty five minutes and we have yet to find an excuse for the vast change in my appearance. Lucy wasn’t any help at all; she just stood there amazed that I really did end up staying in a single room for one whole year just to get back at my brother.

An hour went by and Barry saw a very familiar car pull into the driveway. I didn’t remember it at first because it’s been a year since a saw any cars, other than the police car. After a while of me thinking who was in the driver’s seat. I finally remembered; it was Mr. Crane, the lawyer.

“Barry! Somebody’s here!” I yelled to Barry.

“He can’t see you” he said franticly while he pushed me out the back door.

I ran into the woods. A year ago singularity time, it would have taken me forever to run into the trees. But since I spent a year on working out, it was a piece of cake.

“Hello there Barry, where’s your brother?” he asked

“He went out for a walk” I said quickly, starting to break into a small sweat.

There wasn’t much he could say at the moment and I can give him some credit for that. Barry and I knew we couldn’t keep my age a secret. But I would rather that Mr. Crane would stay out of this whole situation. I would love it if Mom and Dad wouldn’t notice that I had changed, but I went over this before and it would never happen.

Once my crane left, I ended up writing one last journal entry before we left for home.

8:25 am

It felt exceptionally good today when I picked up this journal and noticed that there wasn’t and seconds or mili-seconds to write. The seconds were pouring down so incredible fast compared to how they were 9 months ago, or 5 months ago, or even this morning. I also had as much room as I wanted. I could write two sentences, or I could write a book. It didn’t matter anymore. I was free from my own life. It actually felt like I start fresh. I was stronger. I might be more confident and able to do way more. But then again, I haven’t got any smarter or done anything that a seventeen year old would do. Even thought this was all wonderful, I still felt sorry for Barry. Someone that seemed like a younger brother, two and a half hours went by while he was sleeping, and already his brother aged a year. It wasn’t fair to him.

“Twenty-two minutes!” Barry yelled out to me from the kitchen.

Barry had been counting down the minutes for the past hour until Mom and Dad’s arrival. I figured that this arrival has the same amount of suspense as the arrival of The Approaching One’s arrival. They both need to come and there’s nothing we can do to stop it and both arrivals are incredibly terrifying yet we want to see them eventually.

I started to think what would happen if the singularity was still here. Would Barry go into it just for me? To help us look similar so mom and dad would only think that we grew taller? They wouldn’t really notice our differences.

“Sixteen